That provision was dutifully followed with elections in the general sense of that term until the 1970s when, in order to buffer the judiciary from the political process, the state, through a legislative statute, adopted the "Tennessee Plan".
When judging a case, Justice Scalia will consult a dictionary if necessary to find out what a statute means, but he does not consider the legislative history of the statute, and he makes no attempt to divine the intent of the legislators.
Having veterans of high elective office on the court, he said in an interview, "would give texture to what are otherwise some rather flat and sterile academic debates" over questions like what use to make of legislative history in interpreting statutes.
Although the legislative history of the statutes make it fairly clear that those laws were not created to govern the performance-enhancing drug testing of professional sports, Judge Larson was not willing to ignore the plain meaning of the statute to read in an exception for the NFL.
And he has been strikingly successful at getting his brethren to give less importance to a statute's legislative history.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, said: "There is not a scintilla of legislative direction in the statute that requires the broadened exemption the administration is contemplating.
Holyrood's SNP-led Devolution committee said: "At this stage, no amendments have been made to the employment provisions, the clause on disability or placing all three strands of the Legislative Consent Convention into statute.
But after "a thorough and comprehensive analysis of the plain meaning and legislative history of the statute, controlling Second Circuit precedent, and considerations of equity and practicality," he endorsed the trustee's approach.
A majority ruling of the Appeals Court found that "the purpose, and the legislative history of the statute make clear that Congress was concerned with all child pornography and considered record keeping important in battling all of it, without respect to the creator's motivation" in that it impedes free speech rights.
Using the law against Weinstein was an "utter perversion of the legislative intent behind the statute," the lawyers said.
